No “Consolidation Bonus” For Beauprez

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper has a fundraising edge against Republican gubernatorial challenger Bob Beauprez in their first head-to-head month.

Hickenlooper's campaign said the governor raised about $353,000, while Beauprez's campaign reported about $261,000.

It's the first fundraising report since Beauprez became the Republican nominee on June 24. The reporting period covers June 26 to July 26.

Beauprez has $235,413 cash on hand. He spent most of the money he had raised previously on a four-way Republican primary.

One of the arguments made by Republicans, including commenters on this blog, in defense of the overall lackluster fundraising numbers we saw during the GOP gubernatorial primary, was that Republican support was divided among several relatively equal contenders. It's a reasonable point, and it makes sense that whoever won the primary should benefit from a unified Republican donor base. In fact its important that this happen, since as you can see, Beauprez spent most of his cash on hand while unopposed incumbent Gov. John Hickenlooper banked his huge fundraising hauls through the primary. If Beauprez doesn't want to start writing vanity campaign checks in August, he needs the GOP donor base to pony up.

Interesting, then, that they don't appear to be doing so.

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I went through Mr. Beauprez's contribution report and of the $261,000 he raised from June 26th through July 26th, $50,000.00 of it came from one donation made by the Colorado Republican Party. In other words, he raised around $210,000 aside from the Party's contribution. He doesn't appear to have much of a campaign infrastructure in place, either for fundraising or other campaign activities. At his present fundraising pace, he will have to rely on his own money or third party groups to even put on a half-way decent campaign. He isn't raising money fast enough to fund his campaign.

The Governor's race was always something of a side show for the CO GOP this year. Their #1 priority was always going to be the Man from Yuma. Their #2 priority was the Man from Aurora. Their #3 priority was getting Laura Waters-Woods elected and tipping the state senate. If there was any $$$ left after that, it could be spent propping up BWB.

Their biggest concern was that the side show not overtake the circus which would have happened had Tanc won the primary.

In contrast with Moderatus, I'm not seeing a reason to donate to the Beauprez campaign. The incumbents in the governor and senate race should be the ones with the most "baggage" given that they have to run on their records. Instead, it appears that the challengers have more baggage. And, Hickenlooper showed skill at actually governing with his plan to resolve the fracking ballot initiatives situation–don't see Beauprez topping that. If I give to any top level Repub candidate, it would be Coffman.

As an aside, Laura Woods sort of turns my stomach. She's a big fan of school vouchers. Must not have been paying attention when the DougCo voucher scheme got overturned for violating the state constitution.

PS I live in CD6. I've followed Coffman's votes, statements, apologies for statements, apologies for the apologies and various completely unconvincing flip flops for a long time. I know the guy's a moron. No angst required. Just garden variety powers of perception.